In a move designed to position it for the next stage in the Internet-driven revolution in home entertainment, supermarket chain Tesco has acquired a majority stake in video-on-demand pioneer blinkbox. blinkbox is the UK’s leading movie streaming service, offering thousands of titles streamed on the internet to 2m users each month. Their catalogue of more […]
DirecTV has made its premium VoD plans official, becoming the first pay TV service in the US to offer early-release movies about 60 days after their theatrical debut. The company said it will launch its early release offering of films in partnership with four big studios with Sony’s Just Go With It this week. The […]
ProSiebenSat.1 and RTL have confirmed the launch of a legal appeal against the decision by the country’s competition regulator to block their proposed ‘German Hulu’ video-on-demand service. The platform was blocked because the Bundeskartellamt was concerned it would be closed to smaller content providers and could create a duopoly in the German VoD market. Both […]
March saw a new record for live streaming on BBC’s iPlayer for both TV and radio with 15 per cent of all requests for TV programmes being streamed live. In its monthly report, the BBC said the total number of iPlayer requests in March was 160 million, lightly down on the 162 million January record. […]
The main cinema chains in the US are threatening to not show films if the studios proceed with plans to show movies “on-demand” less than two months after release. Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox are working on a new premium video-on-demand scheme with DirecTV which would see films available in the home between 30 […]
Following the deal made at IFA last year, Samsung´s new generation of connected Smart TVs now offer access to maxdome, Germany´s largest online video store, allowing users to view movie and series highlights from maxdome directly on their televisions. Currently, maxdome offers a selection of over 35,000 titles. In addition to a wide range of […]
Netflix has achieved a remarkable victory in the US: it is now the nation’s largest digital pay-TV platform, bigger than Comcast, DirecTV or Time-Warner. Netflix, as at December 30th, has 20 million subscribers to either to its streaming movie service or postal-supply system. Add in analogue subs and Comcast recovers the top spot (22.8m subs), […]
Sky Deutschland has unveiled what it describes as the first truly integrated offering for TV entertainment of the future – Sky Go. Sky Go on the Web, the newest addition, extends viewing flexibility to the existing line-up of Sky Sport channels – via laptops and computers – and goes one step further. Sky Go on […]
Netflix has bought the rights to stream all seven series of the acclaimed TV show Mad Men, in a deal reported to be worth $90 million. It will pay close to $1 million per episode to show the 91-part series, after signing a deal with producer Lionsgate. Under terms of the the deal, Netflix viewers […]
Premium VOD services which offer restrictive rental windows are priced too high to support significant demand, according to a report from The Diffusion Group (TDG). The report names the new ‘Home Premiere’ VOD service as an example. The premium service, which joins pay-TV operators in the US and Hollywood studios such as Warner Bros, Universal […]